The Chronoplast was an underground complex of both natural and artificial caves; its purpose, like that of the other Time-Streaming devices and chambers once scattered across all Nosgoth, was to allow a soul brave – or foolish – enough to attempt it, the passage through the stream of Time itself. Of all such contraptions, however, the Chronoplast was the most powerful; the only one powerful enough to possibly carry its passenger through as much as millennia – and millennia were separating him from his destined period.
He emerged from the exit of the underground labyrinth, unsure of what exactly the age to which he had been brought was – whether days, years, decades or centuries separated him from the moment when he had left this Nosgoth in the search for his and Raziel’s destiny; for in the dying land, even keeping the record of time was no simple matter – days flowed into nights, nights into days, the former much alike the other under the unchanging sky. For certain, though, he came none too soon; there were Hylden in Nosgoth.
From his vantage point, he could easily make out the skeletal, insect shapes of three of them moving towards the caves from the direction of the former Dumahim abode. He waited until they approached, and then showed himself.
“Look! What is that?” one of the Hylden cried. Its voice sounded peculiar, raspy: as though it were not quite accustomed to speaking.
“One of them,” answered the second, eyeing him up and down.
The third one moved, startled. “Them? Aren’t they all dead already?”
He decided to cut the conversation short, however amusing it might be. “Apparently not.”
He attacked just the first Hylden uttered something that sounded suspiciously like “It talks!” With a powerful telekinetic blast, he hurled one of the enemies into a wall, and another into a bonfire burning nearby, where the creature quickly caught on fire; the third one stood his ground, but was soon cut in half with a single, barely perceptible stroke of the Reaver, whose eyes glowed briefly as it devoured the soul. Then, he came up to the third Hylden, still dazed from the impact upon the wall, and severed the warrior’s head.
“All too easy,” he laughed as he turned around and impaled on the Reaver the still-burning Hylden who had tried to sneak on him from the behind.
Several telekinetic bolts fired in rapid succession at the entrance of the cavern caused it to cave in, preventing, or at least delaying, future unwanted intrusions from the past; one more was enough to destroy the sundial mechanism that opened the gates. It was now the time to consider his next steps –
Sudden fatigue overwhelmed him, utterly disproportionate to the minor skirmish he had just fought; and especially one in which he had suffered no wound. He knew what its source was – he had anticipated this effect, after all; even so, he had terribly, if not fatally, underestimated its scale –

The corruption introduced into the Pillars through the Hylden machinations had turned them against the very land they had been conceived to guard. No longer symbionts of the land, but warped into parasites by the Circle’s madness, they seeped decay into and stole energy out of Nosgoth.
I had perhaps known this all before, in the time when I had ruled as Emperor of the realm: Fate had assigned me a prominent role in sealing the Pillar’s doom. But only now could I truly grasp the magnitude of damage: previously corrupt, and thus not subject to the Pillars’ hunger, I now acutely felt through our symbiotic bond how the Pillars set out to destroy their own destroyer: how the parasite set out to feed on the last source of pure energy in the waste land.

The pull of the Pillars’ hunger was nearly unbearable; yet bear it he must if he were to reach the Pillars themselves. He willed himself to stand up, to move, to fight the terrible fatigue –
He only began to move when, from the corner of his eye, he saw something glitter: between the bonfire and the rock behind it, a layer of cerulean haze was hovering about a metre above the ground. Roughly spherical and scarcely moving, seen from above it would resemble somewhat the surface of a pool of water. He instantly recognised this for what it was –

These eldritch pools of energy had only started to show in Nosgoth shortly before my departure. Torn away from the universal flow of power by the malfunctioning Pillar of Energy, trapped in places scattered about the realm, these stagnant pools were apparent symptoms of the land’s corruption.
All my instincts rebelled against such scavenged fare: yet, the choice in this matter was not mine.

Unhesitatingly, he approached the pool; the dead energy rose to meet him, then gathered around him, enveloped him from the outside; at last, it filled him from within; and there, it stayed. It tasted of death, corruption and decay – repulsive, as repulsive as the blood taken from a long-dead corpse. But whatever its flavour, the energy did nourish him; stronger for the moment, he turned south.
He dared not teleport himself to the Sanctuary, or fly as he was wont to, as a flock of bats: he was weak, and the margin of error was simply too large – he did not know what changes had occurred in the land in his absence. Instead, he followed on foot the snow-covered path that would take him to what had once been the Ash Village of the Dumahim Clan.
On his way, he encountered another patrol of Hylden scouts. The enemies were rather easy to dispatch – certainly, far easier than when he had fought them in Meridian in that ancient age, before the dawn of the Empire – but the erratic pools of energy that he now and again found could cure only ever so many of his wounds –
The Village was an unhappy surprise. Though no longer completely immured – an opening had been forced through the wall that had previously separated the abode from the path – it was clear that he would not be a welcome guest there. A shimmering green dome of Glyph energy – a defensive measure constructed specifically against vampires – covered the place completely; clearly, an important enough Hylden encampment must have been located within.
He found that he could not cross the Ward Shield, or even come close to it; apparently, he still shared the vampire weakness to the Glyph energy. Nor did he really wish to enter the Village, at the moment: his path led now elsewhere, he must conquer the Pillars lest he perish to their hunger. He left behind the bodies of the unfortunate Hylden that had been posted as guards outside the gate, and, vowing to return to the Village in some unspecified future, continued down the path which led to the Abyss.

The swirling vortex of the Abyss had claimed countless lives of traitors who had dared defy my will as the Emperor of Nosgoth. Its last victim had been Raziel; though for him, the place had become as much as a beginning as it had been an end.
The familiar landmark greeted me as though I were an old friend returning from an overlong journey. I would greet it in return, if I could but stop wondering – what was the false god that Raziel had encountered lurking in its depths? And how could one destroy a creature which claimed to be beyond time or space?

He leapt to the other rocky outcropping which overhung the whirlpool; crossing the wooden bridge which still connected the ledge with the terra firma, he followed the serpentine path through the grey canyons which would eventually take him to the Pillars.

I anticipated resistance at the Pillars; it was a key strategic point, and the Hylden would not leave it unguarded.
Even so, little was I prepared for the scene I witnessed in the Sanctuary of the Clans.

The Sanctuary of the Clans lay in ruin. Either through some natural calamity, or by some power’s command, the once-magnificent building had been torn down into rubble. Heaps of stones and bricks were lying throughout the spacious clearing; here and there, the remainders of a wall or a support post were still standing. The two pools of water which had once greeted the vampires seeking audience with their Lord, reminding them of their impotence in the face of the greatest weakness of their kindred, were now but two shallow pits of mud and dirt; in some places, Nosgoth’s black plants had already taken root amongst the masonry.
There was not a living soul in sight: but there were plenty of corpses – the whole ground was littered with Hylden bodies. Most of the cadavers were horribly mutilated; some were in outright indiscernible pieces – mere lumps of bone, metal and cloth, fused together into a horrid mass. Just as he had thought, the Hylden must have attempted to gain control over this critical spot; but it was clear that they had failed, repelled by some even more powerful force.
But this was not yet all: completing this picture of decay and death, a heavy, unmoving dark blue mist of stagnant energy lingered all about the place, covering it like a shroud would cover a corpse. The broken Pillars emerged from this cerulean haze in the distance; approaching from the north as he was, he was now behind them. Their appearance was unchanged from what he remembered them to be in this era; as he came closer, he saw that his throne was similarly untouched by time: it was still clutching the Pillar of Balance in its stony grasp.
Slowly, warily, agonisingly aware again of the merciless, implacable hunger of the Pillars: the quintessential parasite, they were utterly indifferent to the fact that his fall would soon spell their doom – he stepped on the dais and entered between the shattered columns; all the while looking for the familiar figure –
There she was.
“Ariel. Still here, I see.”
The ghost of the former Balance Guardian was hovering somewhat to the front, turned away from him; at the sound of his voice, a short, sudden spasm rippled through her ethereal body. Then, Ariel slowly turned to face him: first, only her head (and, for a moment, as always, she looked almost beautiful to him as he saw only the human half of her face – but, as always, that impression quickly faded when the part of her face that was the naked skull came into view) and then, her whole body –
“Through no fault of mine, as you well know, Kain,” she said coolly.
“All too well,” he replied in a similar tone. His relationship with the ghost had never been easy, as neither Ariel nor he were particularly willing to forgive the past betrayals. It galled him that he had to ask her now for information... again: as though he were reduced again to that simpering fledgling he had once been. “You have reminded me of that often enough. Tell me,” he added forcefully, “what happened here?”
But the ghost, secure in her conviction that he could not touch her, would not be cowered; would not give him the straight and simple answer he demanded. “Ever the helpless spectator,” she ululated, “I cannot abandon these Pillars to which I am bound not by my own accord, but by your perfidy, Kain; yet you – you, who have willingly pledged yourself to guard it – can; and you have.” Her tone altered rapidly; she almost spat out the last word.
As a fledgling, he had once or twice attempted to test the Soul Reaver’s powers on Ariel; to check whether the ghost was as secure against him as she presumed – only to discover, to his dismay, that, indeed, she was. Ariel was to remain a constant of his existence; her hatred for him only deepened across the millennia of their cohabitation.
And, apparently, like the Abyss, she had not changed much in his absence.
Edging towards the Pillar of Balance, where the blue haze of the stagnant energy was the densest (the mist rose to meet him; and though it felt no better than it had before, immediately he felt stronger); gathering the last of his patience – he answered:
“I had my reasons for leaving, Ariel.”
“Perhaps,” the ghost answered contemptuously. “But the last Guardian has abandoned his post, and they have returned. The Unspoken.”
Kain sneered, “One would think, Ariel, that after millennia of existence as a ghost, you would finally have the courage to call them by their true name: Hylden.”
The ghost was evidently incensed by the ridicule. “It is no mere cowardice that rules me, Kain: it was decreed – by your vampiric ancestors – that the name, and its carriers, forever be forgotten.”
“In that case, they were fools to put ignorance over knowledge; yet I see no dissent in that matter on your part, human. However –” he continued without giving Ariel a chance to speak – “the Hylden’s obscurity clearly was not enough to win this battle for them. Who defeated them?”
There was a note of bitter triumph in Ariel’s voice as she replied, “If you linger in these ruins, you are sure to encounter them. I will say no more.”

The ghost fell silent, and for a short time he was afraid that she would escape him into whatever safe harbour she retreated when at times she could no longer bear his presence. But the ghost did not fade from his view; instead, she appeared to –
For all it looked like, she appeared to listen to something – something he could not hear –
And then, belying her previous words, Ariel suddenly spoke out, clearly no less astonished than he was. “Kain, I – I am called.”
“Called?” That was all he managed to say: for at this moment, Ariel began to change: the death mask she wore for half of her face started to rapidly fill out with flesh and skin until her face was one and whole (and, as he saw her that way for the first time, he was finally free to admit that in life, Ariel must have been beautiful); the tattered rags the ghost wore mended themselves –
And suddenly, instead of the impotent, embittered, half-crazed spectre he had known for millennia, he was facing a figure of power, a figure he had long thought gone and forgotten; a figure much like the Ariel who had first greeted a fledgling vampire on a quest to exact his revenge on a world – only more so: a puissant Guardian of Balance. “Yes,” she said, and he could hear that even her voice was much different now; much stronger – “Raziel calls for the Guardians’ reunion; I must leave. And perchance I will be free at last; perchance my long vigil is over –”
“And if I find peace, Kain,” she added, even as he saw her fade into nothingness, “then may you fare well in your quest... May you find your peace as well.”
“Ariel?” he called out in disbelief; but he was now alone in the cerulean haze.

Leaving behind but her uncertain benediction, Ariel departed to seek her deliverance at Raziel’s hands. Apparently, I was to face the Pillars’ mute fury alone.
Unchanging in the greyness that epitomised their corruption the Pillars stood, heedless of any suppliance I would send their way; and I began to wonder if I had come too late; if the Pillars of these age were beyond redemption –
And it was then: as I faced the Pillars without and my doubts within – that I suddenly felt a faint sensation at the edge of my awareness, an inexplicable urge; not unlike the one that had called me to the Spirit Forge for the reunion of the Guardians of Balance.
And I knew what had to be done: Ariel’s was not to be the only cage which need shatter that day.

The throne under the Pillar of Balance appeared sturdy; indeed, it must have been such for it to withstand so well the test of time – more than a millennium had passed since its construction; for more than a millennium had he ruled from it with iron fist over vampires and humans alike. Even so, he held little sentiment for this symbol of his fallen Empire; and when he gathered the remnants of his powers, the durability of stone proved insubstantial compared to the might of his wrath; as it always had.
And thus, the cage in which by his own hand he had imprisoned the Pillars was by his own hand shattered; and the healing of the land could begin.
The Pillar of Balance, the axis of the Nine, was returned to Nosgoth; straight, white and pristine as he remembered it from eras long past, it materialised from the very air before him, from the heavy blue mist around him – a column of marble with no beginning, nor end; a vision of his mind’s eye; yet a vision once real, and now real again. And suddenly, he half-perceived, half-intuited an unspoken promise: he was now safe: corrupt as the other Pillars might be, he was now safe from them and from their hunger –
But even as the Pillar of Balance rose, he felt the odd pull again. This time, its source was the leftmost Pillar, that of Mind. He approached; all it took this time was, apparently, a touch –

The Pillars of Mind and Dimension were restored; the Pillar of Balance bound their powers to me. In my veins, the conjoined forces united and became one –
And, as I gained command of Air, I was transformed.

There was a –
A Change – a Change which in quality was perhaps not unlike those through which he had gone all throughout his existence; especially when he had been yet young, yet a fledgling, and his vampiric body Changed often; but in quantity – in quantity this was a Change multiplied thousandfold. His body shivered under the power which was now passing through it; the Change warped it, twisted it to its tastes – perhaps, as before in Ariel’s case, filling some lacuna in his self; though for him, unlike her, it was a lacuna whereof he had not been previously aware –
Wings.
The power deserted him, and he was in command of himself again; and he felt them: wings, vampire rather than Hylden in appearance; black and feathered, stretching further than his height was –
But he would not have the time to inspect them in detail: for at that moment, a massive earthquake rippled through the ground below him; and then, the demons appeared.
They materialised out of thin air all around him: fiends of various shapes, colours and powers; some fiery red, others toxic green or lightning blue; these, then, were the agents of the Hylden’s demise –
He had first fought demons in Avernus when he had been but a fledgling; and last, in the Vampire Citadel in the epoch he had just departed. In comparison with the other foes he had encountered – especially the puny humans of the Sarafan order; he smiled at that remembrance – they were fairly difficult to kill. Of course, that did not mean much in the usual circumstances; unfortunately, the circumstances were uncomfortably far from usual. Though with the restoration of the three Pillars he no longer faced the threat of exhaustion – indeed, the Pillars would help him regenerate his health, even if they would do so distressingly slowly – he was still much weakened; and here he faced not one or two of the beasts, but a whole horde of them –
Two demons approached first, a green one from his left, a blue one to his right. He unsheathed the Reaver, keeping it in front of him to be able to both attack and defend himself. The monster on the left struck first; he deftly sidestepped its blow, and when the giant limbs were already committed to the strike, he severed them with a quick vertical slash. He then moved forward and cut the creature horizontally in twain; barely in time to dodge a lightning projectile thrown by the other demon. Spinning around rapidly, he cut diagonally, shoulder-to-waist, through the cobalt-blue fiend –
He didn’t finish the move – though he did not really need to: the creature was already dead; but at this moment he felt fire searing into his flesh: another fiery demon, standing right behind the now-falling blue one. To avoid the creature’s deadly breath, he sprang into air, forcefully tearing the Reaver from the carcass –
It took all two of his wings’ strokes to take him far above the mass of the hideous, fiendish bodies now swarming on the ground. From the above, he fired several telekinetic projectiles in succession; the two demons closest to him were thrown back by the unseen force; and then –

The Reaver captured another demon’s soul – he did not know how many of them he had killed; he had stopped counting them long before. But his enemies did not decrease in number – every time he killed one fiend, another one arrived to replace the fallen. And he was bleeding profusely from several wounds; the Pillars evidently did not regenerate his strengths quickly enough to instantly heal the injuries–
Loath as he was to admit defeat, he would have to temporarily concede the battlefield. He took to air again, leaving behind a gift to his enemy – several effigies made of nothing but thin air and diaphanous mist, yet completely like him in appearance and action. The decoys – the product of the powers of Mind – occupied his enemies’ attention whilst he departed safely, heading for the northwest.

At whatever power’s behest they acted, it was clear that these demonic guardians aimed to destroy all, Hylden or vampire, who dared enter the fallen Sanctuary. Whoever controlled them clearly had his own plans for this place.
Yet what these plans were, I knew not and would not guess; I knew far too little of this world to which I had come. And now that I was no longer in danger from the Pillars, the time had arrived for me to learn more.
I knew where to begin my hunt for information: to the north, behind the high walls of the human Citadel.